9) Personal Responsibility – Can you handle it ?

 

Imagine being told by someone that whatever you said today was the way to go.

Every decision of the day is what you choose, and no-one can change it.

The day is as you make it! All decisions are yours!

 

At first thought many will react with a “Hell yes. If only”

 

But please stop the mind for a minute and consider what I've just said. You will have absolute responsibility for everything you are going to do and for those effected by your decisions.

 

Not just in the workplace but at home. On the train, bus, plane. In the shop, pub, restaurant. At the hospital, Doctors or care home. Whatever and where ever you are the buck stops with you because you have the ultimate power as to what is done next.....

 

Could you handle it..?

 

In my work with clients, I have three words that are the goals of achievement in our work.

 CHOICE – RESPONSIBILITY - AUTONOMY

 

Now in society it's probably fair to say that most of us will shy away from some form of important decision making every day because we don't want to take responsibility for the outcome.

 

Where shall we go on holiday? The red one or the blue one? This number or that number? Stay or leave? This job or that job? Us or I? This house or that house? Love or not? Fight or flight?

 

When an individual is experiencing a dip in their Mental Health for whatever reasons they can become detached from their ability to make even the simplest of choices. It's not because they suddenly lose years of education but because their mind has become too busy to process the choices they have. Then for fear of getting it wrong they will awfulize the outcome. Adding anxiety and failure to the list of issues already in place.

 

Therefore, I work with a client to help them see that they have temporarily lost connection to this part of their being. The part of them who has the confidence to choose.

 

The important thing about making a choice is that we must take responsibility for that choice and own it. If we can do this, we are able to work towards rebuilding self-confidence and in turn our autonomy either returns or in some cases appears for the first time.  

 

The positive changes I witness in people who go through this process is rewarding in itself.

 

Pete Thompson

Dip. Couns. MNCPS (Acc.)



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